Can you live with a TN panel?

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I'm looking for an affordable laptop that would be used as a secondary computer. I'm going to use basically for coding at bootcamps, and when travelling, which doesn't happen that often. I found a good deal with the Lenovo Yoga 14 500. It is available at €400, and comes with 4GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD (that I will replace with my 120GB SSD), and a Pentium 3805U (2-core, 1.90 GHz, 2MB cache).

The main drawback is its screen : 768p and a TN panel, with poor viewing angles as mentioned in this review : "The panel inherits all the bad and good sides of a typical TN matrix. IT consumes a lot less power than the average IPS panel, but lacks the viewing angles, sRGB color gamut coverage, high brightness, and contrast ratio. It also uses PWM across all brightness levels at a really low frequency – 220 Hz which puts a lot of strain on the user’s eyes, especially when they are sensitive." This, along with the number and graphs they provided really sound awful, but I would like to know if that's something I can live with, now that the price is lower and keeping in mind that I won't use the laptop that often. He also has many other good points like the high quality of the speakers, the backlit keyboard and the decent CPU. What do you think?

 

Thanks

[Guest Generallee]

As a user of three 1920x1200p TN panels in eyefinity, i can tell you that you will survive 

[FunkyFeatures]

I find cheap Lenovo laptops to have especially bad panels (bad calibration from factory), but it's livable. The "PWM is bad for your eyes" is pretty much marketing. One of my monitors has DC, the other one PWM. I don't notice a difference in eye-strain or nothing. If you get a lot of eye-strain from standard monitors/laptops already, it will be a problem, but most likely not.

 

As long as you have nothing to compare it to, it should look all right. If you use a premium IPS display next to it however...

[ZetZet]

On a desktop yes, easily. 

 

On a laptop fuck no.

[GER_T4IGA]

I have two 1920x1080p TN panels at my desktop. Those are fine but my laptop is 1600x900 TN panel and it is not fun. However if your budget is only 400 bucks this might not be your biggest concern. If I'd have to chose from resolution and panel technology on a laptop I would honestly go for resolution unless you can get a 1600x900 or more panel. Just keep in midnt that viewing angless on laptops are way more important than on desktops.

To conclude this I'd say living with TN panels is fine, ... maybe even on a laptop but I would not want to use that 1366x768 panel.

[Ryoutarou97]

I have a 1080p TN panel on my desktop monitor and I literally died. You will not survive.

[AresKrieger]

TN panels are fine so long as you don't look at them from an angle, with a laptop that may or may not be an issue, it would be best to check one out yourself before pulling the lever on the purchase.

[annoyingmoments]

5 minutes ago, bmuskett9920 said:

I used a tn panel but changed to an ips and it is so much better and i would never go back

Same here. Before I used a TN panel, after that an IPS. Once you go IPS, you never want back to TN.

 

To answer OPs question: Most of us can not really say that much about a specific model, but have in mind that TN panels can have the worst viewing angles you have ever encountered or be at least sub-par with an IPS. As for notebooks in general I can say from expereince that there are big quality differences between different vendors and notebooks. If you use it just for coding and travelling, it might be okay, but if you want to work on it while you are on a plane, train or somewhere you do not really have a table, you might find the  experience of using a very cheap TN panel annoyingly bad.

 

You already found a review of that Lenovo, so I would check more of them or even reviews in Online shops, before you purchase it in a store or online shop.

From my experience I can say, that notebooks below 500 EUR (~555 USD) are always cut in quality due to profit margins, above this "border" the quality, quite often improves with every 20 bucks. The display is one of the things they cut the cost to the max. Tbh I would feel ashamed to make bad products, but this is not related to the topic

[IAmAndre]

24 minutes ago, annoyingmoments said:

Same here. Before I used a TN panel, after that an IPS. Once you go IPS, you never want back to TN.

 

To answer OPs question: Most of us can not really say that much about a specific model, but have in mind that TN panels can have the worst viewing angles you have ever encountered or be at least sub-par with an IPS. As for notebooks in general I can say from expereince that there are big quality differences between different vendors and notebooks. If you use it just for coding and travelling, it might be okay, but if you want to work on it while you are on a plane, train or somewhere you do not really have a table, you might find the  experience of using a very cheap TN panel annoyingly bad.

 

You already found a review of that Lenovo, so I would check more of them or even reviews in Online shops, before you purchase it in a store or online shop.

From my experience I can say, that notebooks below 500 EUR (~555 USD) are always cut in quality due to profit margins, above this "border" the quality, quite often improves with every 20 bucks. The display is one of the things they cut the cost to the max. Tbh I would feel ashamed to make bad products, but this is not related to the topic

Well I think that the fact that the display can be rotated at 360 degrees hell, since I would even be able to lay it flat